Thus Bad Begins (2016)

"This is familiar territory for Marias, both in its forensic examination of the grey areas of personal morality, and in the way personal stories open up to reveal truths about the historical trauma buried beneath the surface of modern Spain. His magisterial trilogy Your Face Tomorrow, which also deals with the legacy of the Civil War, has a strong claim to be the best European novel of the twenty-first century to date, and the fiction he wrote in the nineties, particularly A Heart So White and Tomorrow in the Battle Think On Me, pays precise and revelatory attention to the nuances of human relationships, our compromises, lapses and evasions..."